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Derek over at Widgets Lab did a quick mashup of Google Blog Search and Grazr to give us a nice widget news widget. Basically the Google Blog Search, “widget” and “webwidget”, is provided in RSS format and fed into Grazr, an OPML/RSS feed reader. If you need to keep up-to-date on widgets then this could be a what you are looking for. Or, if you like the concept, you can create your own blog news widget in a few minutes.

We posted a quick review of the AnswerTips Widget the other day. Unfortunately, the short review resulted in a comment that has bugged us for a couple of days. That comment, in conjunction with some user comments over on Widgetoko’s post on the same topic, has pushed us to prototype a Search Widget much like AnswerTips. In our opinion, it adds some features that we feel are beneficial to the users.

Comments are always welcomed. But, to avoid any confusion, we are not disclaiming the value of the AnswerTips widget. We happen to think it has potential. What we are doing is illustrating some features that we feel are useful to users, especially to users with the same mindset/browsing practices that we have. There will obviously be users who browse differently or think differently.

Currently only tested and verified to work with Firefox 2 and Internet Explorer 7.

Highlight text and then press q (on this site) to see how the prototype search widget works.

Please understand that this is a prototype and does have issues. Feel free to provide feedback. If you are experiencing problems, make sure that the page fully loads. There are several test widgets on this site which cause long load times.

Widgetoko has a post on a new widget that provides answers and definitions to any word that is double-clicked on a site or blog where the widget is enabled. We did not install the widget for testing so head over to Widgetoko for a demo.

The AnswerTips widget is from Answers.com. When installed, anyone that double-clicks a word will get a “bubble of information” for the word. Testing on Widgetoko returns mostly accurate (within context) information or definitions for the word.

Overall the widget worked well. However, there were two major issues we saw with the widgets. The first concern is the same as the one voiced by Widgetoko. We don’t believe the average user double-clicks a word to initiate an action. The only time we think this would happen is when someone wants to copy-paste a single word. However, this leads to our second issue. We believe that multi-word selections are more common and because of this we believe multi-word definitions or information would be more useful and relevant.

These two issues will make it difficult for the widget to be widely adopted. At this point, most people are used to highlighting (copy/paste) phrases and searching Google from the Google Toolbar. That’s pretty hard to beat.

Again, for more information and a functioning demo check out Widgetoko.

Note: We do not have any data to support the claims made above. It is just our opinion.

For those of you who may have missed the 2007 NHL All-Star Game or if you just want to relive the moments. Here is the highlight clip from the NHL YouTube channel. This was a high scoring game with the Western Conference beating out the Eastern Conference, 12-9.

As for the full game, we are patiently watching the NHL on Google Video page to see if it will appear there. Unfortunately, we’re not exactly sure what’s going to happen to the NHL and Google deal. With news of the new Google and YouTube strategy, it is unclear if Google Video will move to more of a search engine status and drop video sharing or if they will continue the video sharing features to compliment those of YouTube. We can only wait and hope that they continue to provide full NHL games on Google Video.